


Small Softnesses

by icarus_chained



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Comfort, Families of Choice, Ficlet, Friendship/Love, Kissing, Love, Multi, Polyamory, Sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 23:05:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7660498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vox Machina kiss each other. A lot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Small Softnesses

Vox Machina kiss each other. A lot. Not for any particular reason, often, they just do. It's a thing that happens. None of them particularly mind it.

Pike kisses people on the cheek, on the forehead, on the nose sometimes when she's feeling giggly and daring. Her kisses are gentle and inspiring and like little bursts of light against the skin. They're all a little in love with her. Well, who wouldn't be? Kisses like that feel like sunshine on rainy days. They glow, each of them, whenever she should gift them so. They find smiles for her in the midst of the greatest of darknesses, real and honest ones, and silently and fervently pledge to guard her light against all the world.

Vex kisses on the cheek too, but just as often on the mouth, wild and happy and congratulatory. Vex is sly and exuberant and joyous. She kisses like the world is too enticing not to taste, the wealth of it too sweet not to share. When Vex kisses them their hearts all lurch into their throats, for no particular reason at all. The world feels richer and more vibrant when Vex presses her lips laughingly to their own. Sometimes there is a darker tinge, a well of longing and desperation and need for sensation in return. They grant it to her willingly.

Vax's kisses are usually tinged with adrenalin, bursts of shock and joy and relief that, yet again, he hasn't died, or they haven't died, or that plan went a lot better than he'd thought. They're giddy, usually, sometimes forceful, full of breathless, wordless emotions. They hold him close, the lot of them. They pull him in, let him cling to their shoulders, let him pepper rasping, giddy kisses along their jaws. They hold him tight, every time.

Scanlan's kisses are almost always laughing. He's like Vex, that way, he kisses out of joy and slyness and just because he can. He presses florid kisses to incredulous hands, nibbles gently at fingertips and laughs at flushing annoyance. Smaller ones, gentler ones, he presses to their cheeks, and sometimes large theatrical ones to their lips to help them hide from pain or fear or embarrassment. Scanlan offers kisses as shield and enticement and balm, and whether they admit to it or not they are always grateful, always willing.

Percy is more often kissed than kissing, still hesitant after all this time, but his kisses have a grace to them when they arrive. They are gentle, almost courtly, and somewhat reminiscent of Pike's. They're soft things pressed to the palm of a hand, the soft pulse of a wrist, brushed lightly and comfortingly against a temple while he gently cups a face. They are strange, dizzying things, at once soothing and desperately raw. They hurt, and do so beautifully. They would let none but him wound them this way.

Keyleth's kisses are like butterflies, darting, nervous things, infinitely fragile. They are fleeting, there and gone again, gifts from a fearful heart. It took so long for them to learn how to catch them, how to close gentle fingers around those butterflies without crushing them, and guide her back for slower, sweeter moments, resting her head quietly against theirs. Keyleth's kisses are always ephemeral, a gentle reminder that she will outlast all of them. They are accepted, even longed for, regardless and in spite of that.

Grog's kisses are so much more immediate. Rarer, too, he hugs more than he kisses, a looming, booming, joyous presence, but he kisses them too. Rough ones pressed to mouths or temples in fierce congratulations, giddy ones like Vex would grant, and sometimes gentler ones too. Careful ones, so very careful, mindful of how small they are compared to him. Little ones when they've been hurt, gentle ones when they've been sad and he doesn't want them to be. He is desperately reassuring, their Grog, a strength and a simple, earnest love to lean into. In Grog's world there are very few doubts, and there are times when that is a boon to all of them.

They kiss each other. All of them. They whisper to each other and hold each other and brush gently against each other's skin. They touch each other. Remind each other, mostly, of how not-alone they are, how warmed and touched and loved they are in each other's company. There is always a kiss to be had, if one is needed, or even only wanted. Fierce or delicate or laughing, gentle or joyous or breathlessly raw. A kiss to the hand, to the cheek, to the temple, to the lips. A kiss to shield, a kiss to hide, a kiss to reassure, a kiss to delight, a kiss to comfort, a kiss to excite. Any and all may be had. They do not fear to offer them to each other. Life is perilous, and inside each press of lips is found courage, found strength, found comfort, found _home_. They are touches and reminders of all that there is to be fought for. None of them flinch from that anymore. None of them will again.

And so they kiss each other. A lot. For every reason and for no reason at all. More than is fair, or right, or publicly decent, not that any of them particularly care about that. They are a law unto themselves, Vox Machina, at least in some things, and this is very much one of them. It's a thing that happens, their thing, that they keep safe and warm and shining between them. It is a thing they will not be parted from.

For if anyone were ever to ask it of them, you see, that person would be asked to kiss something too, and it would _not_ be anyone's lips.


End file.
